Dragon Age: Visitors
by AcidSerra
Summary: Varric shook his head and rubbed at his jaw. "Not the gentlest of invitations," He mused. "A Seeker of the Chantry, hmmm. I guess the question is what are you seeking?" "Tell me about the Champion and her... servants." The woman ordered. "Ahh, you would be interested in that story." Varric nodded to himself. "It all begins during our journey to the deeproads..." [ONESHOT]


**Disclaimer: Dragon Age belongs to Bioware and EA. Halo belongs to Bungie, or Microsoft, or whoever the rights wound up with now.**

* * *

"Come sister!" A dark haired woman in light armor with black fur around the edges said. Her bow was resting across her shoulders. "Today is a good day to fight darkspawn!"

"You truly cannot contain yourself, can you, Sister." A mage in cloth and chainmail asked in annoyance. Her impressive breasts heaved while she leaned on her staff for support. "The darkspawn have occupied these tunnels for ages, I think they can wait another hour for us to kill them."

A deep roar interrupted them. It echoed through the darkened depths of the deeproads but slowly came closer. Finally an ogre broke from the darkness. It stopped just within sight of them and roared once more.

"Shall I, Sister?" The more curvaceous of the sisters asked.

"No… I think we should let our pets have some fun for once," The Champion smirked and then released a piercing whistle.

A pair of hornless Kossith in heavy armor charged past the mages. One male, the other female, but both silent in their obedience. Incapable of fear, the mighty beast roared its defiance at the pair while rearing back to crush them into dust. The female struck first, sliding between the creature's legs with a bastard sword in either hand biting into the flesh of its legs. A mighty fist impacted the floor just after she'd passed, but then the pain was too much for the creature and it fell to its knees.

The male Kossith ran a short distance up the nearby wall and jumped off. It brought its great axe down in a blow that severed the giant's arm from its body. Thrown off balance the creature fell to land on the oxman's waiting axe. Blackened blood poured from the creature's neck as its very weight decapitated itself on the weapon.

The Champion and her erstwhile sister approached the corpse. "Truly a worthy kill," She noted.

Their examination was interrupted by the screeching and hollering of a small army of darkspawn. The horde would soon be upon them in the darkness, but the Champion only smiled. "And this day we shall have many more…"

* * *

Varric Tethras leaned back slightly as he caught the unimpressed look on his hostess' face. "Am I boring you, Seeker? I had thought you were the one who wished to hear the story."

"I have little interest in the bullshit you feed to others for entertainment, dwarf. I already know that the Champion's servants were not Kossith, so why don't you quit telling tall tales," the woman drew a knife and slammed it into the tome on his knees, "AND TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW!"

There was a moment of stunned silence as Varric processed her words and examined just how uncomfortably close the woman had come to making him a eunuch. "A fair point. But I can tell you now that even beyond the tale of the Champion, the tale of those two is difficult to believe. I'd hate to be… punished… for making things up when I only tell you the truth."

"Tell me the truth, dwarf. I will handle matters of my own belief," Cassandra said.

"Very well… Now the visitors, that's what _we _called them, didn't start out together. In fact it was only due to a whim of fate itself that they came to be with each other. You see in the land they come from a war had broken out. Kin of the man's people had been lost long ago and only recently found again. But what greeted them were a people changed by circumstance. A land where men had died off entirely and only strange magics allowed their society to continue and even flourish."

"They tried to get along… at first. But the hatred was instant and mutual. Where one saw order, the other saw oppression. Where one saw the natural order, the other saw a relic that no longer mattered to them. Frankly, where one saw green the other saw blue, so deeply were they at odds. That the war started surprised no one… That it lasted past the first day shocked them all…"

* * *

Dust hung in the air inside the abandoned apartment block. Some of the walls had collapsed while others seemed almost perfectly pristine. Rubble littered the ground, along with the detritus of items left behind and forgotten in the evacuation. The entire building vibrated as the make-shift surface to space gun emplacement behind it fired.

Metal on metal impact rings throughout the corridors. The sound of two titans locked in combat almost deafening in the otherwise silent building. Not so long ago it had been gunfire that the titans had exchanged, but their ammunition hadn't held out long enough for one of them to gain an advantage.

Spartan C345 bore down on his opponent with his knife. Despite his best efforts he'd yet been unable to pin them down in a contest of brute strength where he would have the clear advantage. Instead they slipped around him deflecting his knife the hairs edge needed to render the strike useless. He'd have been frustrated if he weren't so completely focused on the battle in front of him.

Class-2 Citizen GB7741 Carson evaded another strike with the barest of margins. Without an actual suit of Mjlonir power armor to start from, the Class-2 project had been forced to develop their armor from scratch. Instead of an angular and bulky look it was streamlined and flowing, flexible in all the right locations to take advantage of her superior agility. She used this fact to the fullest as she attempted to land a hit of her own on the armored hide of the Spartan.

Neither gave ground. They fought point blank, kicks, fists, grapples, knives everything goes but neither quite gained the upper ground. The Class-2 would evade with the barest of margins while the Spartan would block any hit just before it could land. Like twin juggernauts they refused to fall, to give up precious momentum, but neither unstoppable force could break the other.

Neither was aware of the machinations of darkspawn and the terrible beings that acted as their mages. Their existence so far removed from the concerns of Thedas that neither had even heard of the Fade. For them the realm of souls was the barest of touch on their dreams as they slept. A foggy recollection that they had seen… _something… _but lost, as most dreams, in the process of waking.

Still, they were not to be underestimated. When the magic of the emissaries ripped a hole in their reality to reveal the deep roads neither hesitated. They waded into the tide of twisted and monstrous bodies with only their plasma knives, short but efficient blades capable of cutting through sword and armor as though it were parchment. Neither had to speak aloud their temporary truce. Instead the watched each other's back, moving as a perfect partnership of death and destruction. Despite their vast numbers the darkspawn were pushed back.

Without the advantage of their surprise invasion the Emissaries keeping the portal open were vulnerable and exposed. Even without knowing much about magic, their being the cause was all too obvious to the warriors. They crashed through the front line of the horde and carved their way to the magic users. Even an ogre accompanied up by four Hurlock Alphas could do little more than slow them down.

The man, the Spartan, took on the alphas. Breaking through the first attack with ease thanks to his plasma knife. That alpha's head was tossed to his next victim, blocking its sight long enough for him to relieve the creature of its legs. His final opponents put up more of a fight by attacking at the same time. But only just. With his right hand he slid his knife into one opponent's gut, while with his left he caught the other opponent's sword arm and broke it. A single moment spared to free his knife and decapitate the last of his foes was all that stood between him and the Emissaries.

The woman, the Class-2 set aside as a cut above mere humans, set herself against the ogre. She took in its size and bulk but moved forwards without trepidation. It took wide, powerful swings at her with its large arms. Yet to her they were little more than an annoyance, a pleasant breeze when she twisted below their mass. Her first swing was her last, slicing across the creature's crotch to open all the blood vessels and sever the muscle connections to the legs. Without looking back she sprinted on to Emissaries, content to let it bleed out on the ground behind her.

Together again they killed the distracted emissaries with little trouble. But this was far from the end of their ordeal. For while the portal closed, saving their land from becoming a target of the blight, they remained inside. Far from home, in the very heart of darkspawn territory… During an active blight.

Anyone would tell you that to survive such a situation would be impossible. But they never thought to give in to despair. Instead they fell back on what they knew best and fought... For over a year, in the dark and outnumbered by the millions, they kept fighting before the Champion and I eventually found them…

* * *

"But that's a story for a later time," Varric said. "As fascinating as the visitors were, I believe you were looking for the story of the Champion."

Cassandra nodded, "You knew her even before she took on that title."

"Yes… That was a simpler time. And perhaps she was a simpler woman. Some days I wonder what happened to that woman I first met… Still for all the flaws I think it's better this way…" Verric mused to himself.

"Better this way?" Cassandra asked in disbelief, "Do you know what's going on out there?"

Varric leaned back, "Let me guess, the chantry is losing its hold on the Templars. The more they slip the harder the mages rebel, the harder the mages rebel the more the Chantry has to lean on the Templars, the harder they lean the more the Templars slip away. Your problem isn't new, Seeker. At some point you're going to have to learn what the Champion learned the hard way."

"And what's that?" She gave him a hard look.

"The ball is already rolling. No amount of holding it together can stop it. Pick a side, make a side, or get out of the way because the storm won't be stopping now," Varric said.

"Which did the Champion choose?" She asked.

"Well… I can't say for certain, but I've got a decent guess. How about I continue my story and let you make up your own mind," He replied. "Now where was I… Ah yes, the Champion. Well for her part it all began with the battle at Ostagar. She was serving in the King's army but on that night they were betrayed… Only a small handful of the soldiers loyal to the king made it out of there alive. Cercie Hawk… Well, she always was a survivor…"


End file.
